Many different types of vehicles require a drive system which provides power to one or more of the wheels of the vehicle. Such vehicles designed for slow relatively low power usage such as chairs for handicapped persons often include a motor directly driving one of the wheels provided with power from a battery.
One of the problems of such chair designs is the unsatisfactory nature of the wheel and motor construction which is extremely bulky and thus complicates the construction of the device and reduces the area available for storage of the battery or other equipment. Attempts have been made to design an arrangement in which the motor for driving the wheel is positioned within the hub of the wheel since this can provide a very compact arrangement particularly suitable for the design of a motorized chair. However a motor-in-the-hub design can also be used in other designs of motorized vehicles with significant advantages of compactness and ease of operation.
Some designs have already been proposed for motor-in-the-hub wheel drive arrangements but these are highly complicated and therefore very costly to manufacture and it is believed that none is commercially successful or has been manufactured on a commercial scale. various proposals are shown in all U.S. Pat. No. 641,603 (Newman); 680,804 (Newman); 1,090,684 (Church); 1,172,456 (Hoadley); 2,608,598 (hawkins and more recent U.S. Pat. No. 4,021,690 (Burton). However, as stated above all these devices are highly complicated leading to devices which cannot be manufactured on a commercial scale.